Ken Park
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| Ken Park | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Larry Clark, Edward Lachman |
| Written by | Harmony Korine, Larry Clark |
| Starring | Adam Chubbuck, James Bullard, Tiffany Limos |
| Release date(s) | 2002 |
| Running time | 95 mins |
| Country | U.S.  / France  |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,300,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
Ken Park is a controversial 2002 drama film. The screenplay was written by Harmony Korine, who based it on Larry Clark's journals and stories. The film was directed by Larry Clark and Edward Lachman.
The film revolves around the abusive home lives of several teenage skateboarders and their friends, set in the rural town of Visalia, California. The little-used tagline of the film is "Who Are You?"
Contents |
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Adam Chubbuck | Ken Park |
| James Bullard | Shawn |
| Stephen Jasso | Claude |
| Tiffany Limos | Peaches |
| James Ransone | Tate |
| Seth Gray | Shawn's brother |
| Eddie Daniels | Shawn's mother |
| Zara McDowell | Zoë |
| Maeve Quinlan | Rhonda |
| Wade Williams | Claude's father |
| Amanda Plummer | Claude's mother |
| Julio Oscar Mechoso | Peaches' father |
| Patricia Place | Tate's grandmother |
| Harrison Young | Tate's grandfather |
[edit] Synopsis
The film begins with the public suicide of Ken Park at a local skateboarding park. The film features four friends: Shawn, Tate, Peaches and Claude. It covers their interactions with their families (or lack thereof), and their friends in a dysfunctional society. The film depicts controversial topics such as sexuality, sexual experimentation, incestuous abuse, teenage suicide and to a lesser extent, murder. The film also contains scenes involving under-age drinking and smoking, including drug use.
The title "Ken Park" does not refer to a location, but rather to a character in the film, whose death is used as a plot device at the end of the film. Although never directly stated, Ken Park appears to be set over several days, spanning Friday to Sunday. The plot of Ken Park is non-linear, and often switches between different characters over this time period.
[edit] Controversy
The film contains graphic scenes of explicit sexual behavior, and portrays suicide, murder, parental violence, alcoholism, smoking cannabis, incestuous sexual assault by a homophobic father of his sleeping son, BDSM, autoerotic asphyxiation, religious fanaticism, a fake marriage of a father with his daughter, a boy having sex with his girlfriend's mother, and at the end an idyllic sex scene between Shawn, Claude and Peaches.
During an interview, Clark commented, "I decided that I wasn't going to turn the camera away, or shut the door, or shoot from the waist up."
[edit] Popular culture
- Larry Clark has a cameo as the owner of Larry's hot dogs at which Ken Park works.
- There is a real Ken Park who was a professional skater in the 1980s.
[edit] Production
Larry Clark attempted to write the first script for Ken Park, basing it off real life personal experiences and people he grew up with. Unable to write a script he found satisfactory, he hired Harmony Korine to pen the screenplay. Clark ultimately used most of Korine's script but re-wrote the ending.
The film was given a $1.3 million budget. The arrangement was to film using digital video, but Clark and Lachman instead used 35mm film.
[edit] Distribution
[edit] United Kingdom
The movie was not shown in the United Kingdom after director Larry Clark punched and attempted to strangle Hamish McAlpine, the head of the UK distributor for the film, Metro Tartan. According to Clark, McAlpine expressed support for Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, and, when an appalled Clark asked him about women and children victims of Hamas terrorism, McAlpine basically said that they deserved to die, at which point the altercation began. Clark was arrested and spent several hours in custody, and McAlpine was left with a broken nose.[1]
[edit] United States
The movie has never been issued in wide release in the United States. It has not found a distributor since its initial showing at the Telluride Film Festival in 2002.
[edit] Australia
In Australia, the film was banned for its graphic sexual content, although many consider the ban to have been ineffectual. In response to the ban, a protest screening was held which was shut down by the police.[2] This shut down caused some embarrassment for local police officers who shut down the power of the building attempting to air the movie, as when they tried to remove the DVD from the DVD player they could not do it as there was no power to the building.
[edit] New Zealand
In New Zealand the film was classified R18 and limited to film festival screenings or viewing for a tertiary film studies course.
[edit] References
- ^ Article in the LA Weekly
- ^ Police quiz critic after raid By Kirsty Needham, The Age, July 4, 2003. Accessed May 30, 2007
